Thomas Broyer wrote:
You didn't answer my last question:
How do you expect a newsreader to *automatically* download this week's
50 entries without downloading last week's entries instead?
(and show you links/buttons for you to ask download and display of
previous/next week's Top 50)
I see where you're coming from, but this kind of thing is already a problem
without even taking links into consideration.
For an aggregator to be able to do anything vaguely meaningful with a feed
it has to be able to assume that the feed is incremental in nature. When the
feed is updated an aggregator will by default assume that any new items can
safely be added to the top of an inbox, any updates are updates to existing
items, and any removed items have merely "fallen off the bottom" of the
feed.
However, as soon as we introduce the concept of non-incremental feeds, an
aggregator that is not aware of the concept will fail to process such a feed
in a meaningful way. We've created a situation where an aggregator has to be
aware of the (still to be specified) fh:incremental extension, Microsoft's
simple list extensions for RSS, and whatever future extensions may arise;
basically the ability to see into the future.
This problem merely repeats itself when it comes to processing archives.
When we receive a "next" link, ideally we would like to assume it's a
pointer to the next archive to be processed. For a regular incremental feed
this isn't a problem. Even a search feed could be processed safely if
ordered the right way. However, when it comes to non-incremental feeds we're
screwed again. I agree that it sucks, but we're already stuck with that
situation so I'm not sure that these links will make things any worse.
Regards
James
